Good Shepherd cleaning up

Cigarette believed to be fire cause

Meghan Gallagher, right, a seventh-grade student at Good Shepherd School, and fellow students and parents collect construction paper angels from the partially burned Angel Tree outside the fire-damaged school Wednesday. Parents and students arrived at the school throughout the morning in spite of classes being canceled to see the damage for themselves and to see if there was some way they could help. Fire struck the school gym Tuesday night.

An Evansville fireman heads toward the back of Good Shepherd School Tuesday night as they worked to contain a fire in the gym.

Good Shepherd Catholic Church parishioners have long welcomed bingo nights.

Besides being a fundraiser for the parish and its school, bingo provides fun and interaction.

"The community seems to enjoy coming here. It's been good for us at Good Shepherd," said Ed Wilkerson, a deacon.

Now, though, Good Shepherd is dealing with news that Tuesday night's major fire, which gutted the gymnasium and left smoke and water damage throughout the school, is believed to have been caused by a discarded cigarette that ignited garbage left over from bingo night.

School is canceled until further notice at Good Shepherd, 2301 N. Stockwell Road. The school houses 345 students in kindergarten through eighth grades and 25 teachers, making it one of the larger schools in the Evansville Diocese.

Wilkerson said Good Shepherd is seeking temporary locations to conduct classes. Church staff were in communication with insurance carriers Wednesday.

Officially, school has only been called for the remainder of

this week, but "we're probably

looking at a much longer period of time," Wilkerson said.

Bingo nights at Good Shepherd started at 6:30 p.m. and ended at 10:15 p.m. The fire started not long after Tuesday night's game had ended and the 180 or so people had gone home.

Cleanup personnel who were still in the gym tried unsuccessfully to put the blaze out with an extinguisher.

There were no sprinklers in the gym where the fire started,, said Fire Department investigator Jesse Storey.

He said loose, combustible garbage in the paper sacks created high flames, and a draft from the gym's exhaust fan caused them to spread quickly. An open hallway leading from the gymnasium acted as a chimney for the resulting heat.

"Heat and smoke just tunneled down through the hallway pretty intensely," Storey said.

A fire hydrant on the building's north side could not be used when firefighters were unable to turn the stem to open it, Storey said, but it did not cause delays fighting the fire.

Instead, the crew on the north side used water from its tanker truck. Firefighters then supplemented that by using a second tanker to funnel water from a different hydrant to the tanker.

Storey said the damage, while extensive, did not appear to have caused any significant structural problems, but the cleanup process will likely be a daunting task for the parish.

Good Shepherd celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. The church has 870 families. Parishioners gathered at the scene Tuesday night and throughout Wednesday to share their emotions and pray.

"I think it is going to be a huge job. It is not something that is going to happen overnight," Storey said.

Wilkerson agreed, but he said the first order of business is finding a place for Good Shepherd's students to have school.

More information about that might be forthcoming today, he added.

The church also will review its policies surrounding bingo nights.

"There will be decisions about cleanup, and how we approach the entire process," Wilkerson said.